A Note On Durable Goods Monopolists: Commitment To Forward Compatibility

Contents:

This note re-examines the previous results on durable goods monopolists under the time inconsistency problem that the firm tends to make its goods less compatible as a “planned obsolescence” strategy in the presence of network effects. We find that the possibility of the commitment to forward compatibility is profitable to the monopolist, depending upon the degree of technological progress and network effects. Therefore, contractual commitments that are frequently feasible and observed in real‐world markets make the society better off.

If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.

If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link to it, you can help with this form.

If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through
the various RePEc services.